Is the Amazon Echo Speaker a Fad?

I don’t have an Amazon Echo or a Google home speaker (too much paranoia about unauthorized listening) so I am pontificating from a uniquely unqualified position. However, my anecdotal evidence gathering from talking with early adopters of Echo and Google home, tells me Echo has many of the signs of a fad. There are undoubtedly some cool features, but once the newness wears off, the folk I’ve talked to who own the device find much less use for it.

This morning, the FT is reporting that the Consumer Technology Association is calling for smart speaker sales will peak in 2019 at about 56 million units. Here is more from the FT.

Pretty quickly, compatibility with these [digital] assistants has become table stakes,” said Steve Koenig, senior director of research at the Consumer Technology Association, in a presentation in Las Vegas on Sunday. “2017 was a huge year for smart speakers.”

Sales of devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home in the US increased by 279 per cent to 27m units last year compared with 2016, according to the CTA, and will increase by another 60 per cent in 2018.

However, the industry body predicts that the market will peak in 2019, topping out at 56m unit sales a year.

Jeremy Jones, CFA

Jeremy Jones, CFA is the Director of Research at Young Research & Publishing Inc., and the Chief Investment Officer at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. Jeremy is a contributing editor of youngresearch.com.